SEPTEMBER 11
Remembering and Rebuilding After Downtown’s Darkest Day
How the neighborhood responded, recovered and rebuilt after one of the most tragic days in New York City’s history.
It was sunny, cool and crisp on the morning of September 11, 2001. The skies were a beautiful deep blue and the winds were calm on what was Primary Election Day in New York City. Then, without warning, at 8:46 a.m. hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower. Seventeen minutes later, another hijacked plane, United Airline Flight 175 slammed into the South Tower. That same day, the Pentagon was also attacked, and Flight 93 tragically crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers thwarted the hijackers’ plans to use the plane as a weapon of terror.
In Lower Manhattan, the sky suddenly went from brilliant blue to black and gray. Thousands of residents, workers and tourists ran for their lives at the time of the crashes and then again some 100 minutes later, when the towers fell and filled the sky with hellish plumes of smoke and ash. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani said the preliminary death toll was “more than any of us can bear.” Nearly 3,000 men, women and children as young as two years old perished, including 343 firefighters, 60 city and Port Authority police officers and more than a dozen other first responders. Fires raged, five World Trade Center buildings were leveled, some 14 million square feet of commercial space was destroyed or damaged. Downtown looked like nothing other than what it had become – a war zone.
Milestones
2001
Downtown Pre-9/11
Before 9/11, Lower Manhattan was a thriving financial center, boasting 110,000,000 square feet of office space and home to key players like the New York Stock Exchange, Goldman Sachs and Chase Manhattan Bank. (Photo: iStock)
When terrorists crashed two planes into the Twin Towers on the morning of 9/11, the impact crumbled both buildings, covering downtown in dust, debris and horror. (Photo: Sean Hammerle)
2001-2002
Early Cleanup and Rebuilding Begins
For eight months, thousands of first responders and recovery team members worked around the clock to clear out around 1.8 million tons of debris from the Ground Zero site. (Photo: Joe Woolhead)
The cleanup phase ultimately concluded in May 2002, costing approximately $750 million to $1.5 billion. (Photo: Joe Woolhead)
2006
7 World Trade Center Opens
7 World Trade Center was the first building completed on the WTC campus, opening to tenants in May 2006. (Photo: Silverstein Properties)
The Downtown Alliance launched Re:Construction, a groundbreaking initiative that recast construction barriers as large-scale canvases for temporary public art from local artists, in 2007. The program ran through 2013. (Photo: “Downtown Dogs” by Malin Abrahamsson)
2011
9/11 Memorial Opens
The National September 11 Memorial was dedicated in September 2011, marking 10 years since the attacks, with the 9/11 Museum following with a 2014 opening.
Fulton Center, a transportation hub and retail complex, was first announced in 2002 as part of the MTA’s $1.4 billion capital improvement project. It opened in 2014. (Photo: Mark Weinberg)
2014
One World Trade Center Opens
One World Trade Center, the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere, topped out in 2013 and opened to tenants a year later.
The Santiago Calatrava-designed Oculus made its debut in 2016. The transportation hub doubles as a retail and dining destination.
2023
PAC NYC Debuts
The Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC), a premiere performing arts destination for emergent and established artists in theater, dance, music, opera, film and media, opened in 2023.
Plans for 2 World Trade Center, a new 55-story global headquarters for American Express, were announced in 2026, with an official groundbreaking in July of that year. (Rendering: Foster Partners)
The country and the world would rally to our side, but marshalling the resources to even begin to engage such a vast tragedy would take time. As always, New Yorkers themselves responded immediately with grit and selflessness. In the direct aftermath of the attacks, shops, bars and restaurants transformed their spaces into safe havens for survivors fleeing the cloud of debris. The Alliance turned its Downtown Center (just two blocks south of the demolished World Trade Center) into a triage ward. And in the days and weeks that followed, the city, the Alliance and countless utility workers and others rolled up their sleeves and got working to restore a baseline of normality to downtown.
Facing adversity square in the eye wasn’t new to Lower Manhattan. The American Revolution, the Great Fire of 1835 and the stock market crash of 1929 had all challenged the neighborhood in dire ways. Realizing the symbolic power of showing the terrorists we would not be cowed, the New York Stock Exchange rang its opening bell less than a week after the attacks.
Still, downtown’s future was uncertain.
Recovery and Rebound
2002-2026 (and Beyond)
After the attacks, Lower Manhattan needed to rebuild. Train lines were destroyed or disrupted. Retailers shuttered. Offices began moving out of the neighborhood. Lower Manhattan had, by some estimates, a $54 billion hole in its economy. Downtown lost tens of thousands of jobs across all sectors, with the financial industry being the hardest-hit. With the loss of some major companies, the six-year trend of lowering commercial vacancy was reversed. The press and some policy makers despaired of Lower Manhattan ever recovering.
But some critical companies steeled themselves against rising uncertainty and remained in the neighborhood, including the New York Stock Exchange, the American Stock Exchange, American Express, Brown Brothers Harriman & Company, Deloitte & Touche, Deutsche Bank, the Federal Reserve Bank, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch and other top financial institutions, as well as major retailers like Century 21 and many long-time Lower Manhattan mom and pop shops.
Yet there was no question that the neighborhood needed significant assistance. The initial cleanup and stabilization was crucial, with thousands of first responders and recovery team members working around the clock to clear out around 1.8 million tons of debris while respectfully attending to the remains of those who lost their lives on the site. The cleanup phase took eight months, ultimately concluding in May 2002 and costing approximately $750 million to $1.5 billion.
It took four years after the cleanup phase concluded for redevelopment to earnestly begin on the World Trade Center campus, with a number of different master plans and proposed designs for the main tower, memorial and security. In addition, the destruction of the World Trade Center had severely disrupted transit, destroying the Cortlandt Street station and the World Trade Center PATH station and damaging a number of crucial train lines. The city, state and federal governments committed to help restore downtown’s transportation system, including plans to rebuild the PATH station and extend the ferry system.
The first building completed on the new WTC campus was 7 World Trade Center, which broke ground in 2002 and opened to tenants — including the New York Academy of Sciences, which was the first tenant to move in, and eventually financial service Moody’s — in May 2006. Construction began on One World Trade Center, the campus’s centerpiece, in April 2006, with the tower topping out in 2013 and opening to tenants in 2014. Its completion marked a physical and symbolic sign of a new era dawning in Lower Manhattan. In the years that followed, more developments and landmarks joined One World Trade Center on the campus. 4 World Trade Center and 3 World Trade Center opened in 2013 and 2018, respectively, adding several hundred thousand of feet of office space to the area. The National September 11 Memorial was dedicated in September 2011, marking 10 years since the attacks, with the 9/11 Museum following with a 2014 opening.
The Santiago Calatrava-designed Oculus made its debut in 2016, providing the campus with a sprawling transportation hub as well as a vibrant retail and dining space. Other developments of note include Liberty Park, which opened in 2016; the St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church also designed by Calatrava, which in 2022 replaced the church originally destroyed in the attacks; and the Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC), a premiere cultural and performing arts destination, debuted in 2023. Plans for 2 World Trade Center, a 55-story global headquarters for American Express, were announced in 2026, with an official groundbreaking that July. With that announcement, the last, long awaited commercial development at the site commenced.
As the World Trade Center campus grew, so too did the rest of Lower Manhattan, which gained many office towers, residential buildings, hotels, retailers, restaurants and more over the course of two decades. We also retained legacy businesses like Martin Busch Jewelers, O’Hara’s, Underground Pizza, Jeremy’s Ale House and more, who survived the attacks and continue to operate in Lower Manhattan today.
The businesses, office workers, residents and tourists that come through this now-thriving neighborhood every day are a testament to the resilience of downtown and New York as a whole and an eloquent rebuke to all who doubted Lower Manhattan to remake itself and flourish once again after tragedy
Brookfield Place’s famed Winter Garden Atrium, which was heavily damaged in the attacks, was the first major structure to be restored post-9/11, and reopened in September 2002. It also underwent an impressive renovation in 2015.
How the Downtown Alliance Helped: Culture, Grants and Loans
September 11
Right after the towers fell, the Alliance and its partners quickly launched a $10 million program to help small neighborhood retailers and manufacturers re-build and re-open. A print ad campaign called “Remember. Rebuild” ran and a TV ad campaign narrated by Robert De Niro encouraged New Yorkers to help Lower Manhattan businesses by eating and shopping downtown. The Alliance also went ahead with two major pre-September 11 initiatives – expansion of the Streetscape program and the Downtown Connection bus program, which offered free and continuous service across Lower Manhattan.
In order to keep area small businesses afloat, the Alliance worked with another non-profit, Seedco, to create a loan program “that was essentially giving character loans and grants to retailers,” founding Downtown Alliance president Carl Weisbrod said in 2015. “This was before any government aid was available at all. The government was extremely generous, ultimately, but it could be a long time for the government to gear up… So the Downtown Alliance filled that gap.”
By early 2002, the Alliance had distributed more than $9 million in grants, low-interest loans and wage subsidies. All told, some $37.5 million in aid flowed in to repair or rebuild small businesses crushed in the terror attack.
The Alliance helped the neighborhood in other ways, too. In 2002, we created the celebrated River to River Festival, where the combined efforts of many Lower Manhattan groups, including American Express, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Arts Brookfield and the Battery Park City Authority, helped the neighborhood to heal. We held our first festival in 2002, with performances by hundreds of artists — including Sheryl Crow and Randy Newman — across 20 locations in Lower Manhattan, drawing over a million people to downtown. We continued to run the River to River festival for over a decade, bringing big names and millions of dollars in revenue to the neighborhood. River to River continues today under the auspices of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC).
And, notably, in 2007 the Alliance launched ReConstruction, a groundbreaking initiative that aimed to mitigate the visual effects of downtown’s rebuilding period, as well as to support local artists. The program recast construction barriers as large-scale canvases for temporary public art, unveiling nearly 40 works of art during its five-year run amid a fast-changing post-9/11 Lower Manhattan. Noteworthy pieces included “Flying Animals,” by Caitlin Hurd, at 99 Washington Street; Tattfoo Tam’s “Concrete Jungle” at Fulton Center; Maya Barkai’s “Men at Work” at Liberty and Church streets; and “Star Sun Burst,” by Tayiana Murray, at Hudson Street.
Thanks to ReConstruction, which concluded in 2013, Lower Manhattan’s sidewalks became more user-friendly, its streetscape more scenic, and thought-provoking and delightful art was integrated into the pedestrian experience. In 2016, we put out a publication cataloging all 40 artworks on display, so our temporary living gallery can live on for many more years.
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